In recent years, surveillance systems have become popular in a number of retail establishments in addition to their more traditional use for monitoring warehouses, military installations, and the like. The rapid decline in the cost of electronic components and the increasing sophistication of each electronic component per unit cost, has made the use of sophisticated surveillance systems in a wide variety of establishments practical.
In addition to their more traditional roles as devices for detecting theft, retaining visual records of robbers and the like, more advanced surveillance systems, for example the type shown in copending application Ser. No. 583,045 filed Feb. 23, 1984 and entitled "IMPROVED SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM", which is assigned to the assignee of the present application, have become useful tools for improving the profitability of retail operations.
It has been found by the users of modern surveillance and management systems of the type disclosed in the above-referenced copending application that such systems are extremely useful for monitoring the habits of employees so that good work habits, both in terms of customer relations, and in terms of operating of the cash drawer so as to reduce the opportunities for thefts, can be established. A common use of such surveillance systems includes monitoring operation of retail establishments for employee dishonesty and proper employee procedures when specified amounts of cash are accumulated in a cash drawer. Many such surveillance management systems use video tape recording devices operating in a time lapsed mode. It is known in the art to interface an electronic cash register (ECR) at a monitored location with a decision-making apparatus controlling a video tape recorder so that the nature of certain transactions from the cash register may be either recorded, or saved on video tape. For example, a system shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,145,715 to Clever shows an arrangement in which data provided from an electronic cash register is provided to a microprocessor. Predetermined alarm conditions are defined such as too low an average price per item, or too low a price for a particular department, which will activate the recording device.
However, in addition to the more traditional functions of controlling cameras and recorders, the system described in the above-reference copending patent application is also useful for monitoring other activities of store employees. For example, that system can maintain a running net balance for the amount of money in a cash drawer at a retail convenience store. Standard operating procedures in many such stores require that once a predetermined amount of cash is present in the drawer, a "money drop" into a safe should take place. This is because such establishments are often targets for robberies. This, in addition to merely operating cameras and recorders, that particular system can also store information concerning the time between the last sale which produces the requisite predetermined amount of cash in the drawer and the time a money drop takes place. The failure of the money drop to take place within a predetermined acceptable time limit can generate a condition which will be brought to the attention of the management in a report which the system generates.
In order to generate such reports, as well as to control cameras and recorders so that suspect transactions may be recorded for later viewing, it is necessary that a system controller have access to data indicating activities at the electronic cash register. As noted above, it is known in the art to interface an electronic cash register to a decision-making system in order to acquire such data.
Several years ago, sellers of surveillance systems were often in a position in which they had to provide a particular type of electronic cash register as well as the other surveillance equipment as part of an entire system for monitoring transactions at a retail establishment. This, of necessity, increased the entire system cost to the prospective purchaser, and also presented such prospective purchasers with a decision of whether to abandon use of fully functional and otherwise acceptable cash registers.
It is within the level of skill in the art to interface a given electronic cash register with a given processor system. However, each combination of surveillance system and electronic cash register required a custom device for making the interface. As with any custom designed device, the requirement for such a device, both in design time and in production of a relatively small quantity, increase the cost.
This situation is exacerbated by the fact that most sellers of surveillance and management systems for monitoring locations with electronic cash registers are in the position of selling their systems as retrofit items. In other words, a large number of their potential customers already have selected particular electronic cash registers. They are normally not anxious to incur the cost of providing a different type of cash register, in terms of both capital cost and employee training time, or the cost of having custom interfaces designed for the particular system and the particular cash register.
While many different varieties of ECRs have different characteristics for the signals driving displays and printing devices, there are a number of common factors in the signals driving such components in most ECRs. It has been discovered by the inventor of the present invention that there is a commonly definable set of character timing pulses which are generated by a wide variety of printing mechanisms used in ECRs. Thus, there is a need in the prior art to provide an interface which will interface a wide variety of electronic cash registers to a surveillance system for the gathering of data about transactions at the ECRs. The present inventor has discovered the above-noted common set of character timing signals and has chosen the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) as an output format to thus create a universal data acquisition interface for connecting an ECR to a surveillance, monitoring or management system, which overcomes the above-noted drawbacks of the prior art.